Tag: politics

Snow fell over swords of grass

making a mottled, pre-dawn blanket of white and dark.

It won’t last long.

Stored heat in the driveway already melted some of it.

Snowfall portends winter and the end of autumn work.

We turn indoors to the somnolent beast within.

The 2016 general election was a pisser.

Almost no one outside my immediate family and friends talked in public about politics before the election. Now… colleagues and denizens of the county are unpleasant, gossipy and intolerant. Where did that turn in attitude originate?

It’s easy to blame presidential candidates, politicians and corporate media, and many do. It’s not that simple. Our discontent comes from the unsettling nature of life in the post Reagan era. The reality of it hits hard as social fabric, woven with progressive ideas, unravels.

Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this son of York;
And all the clouds that low’r’d upon our house
In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.
Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths;
Our bruised arms hung up for monuments;
Our stern alarums chang’d to merry meetings,
Our dreadful marches to delightful measures.
Grim-visag’d war hath smooth’d his wrinkled front;
And now, — instead of mounting barbed steeds
To fright the souls of fearful adversaries, —
He capers nimbly in a lady’s chamber
To the lascivious pleasing of a lute.

~ Richard III, Act I, Scene I, A street in London

Right now the country could use a good Plantagenet-era revolt — like the one in 1381 — to check the excesses of the coming shit storm of governance. By all accounts, there is a growing will to resist and take action. We wait and watch as skies darken despite approaching dawn.

Inside a beast is awakened. Once groggy and listless, now restless and wondering whether Robartes’ vortex has begun to narrow.

Given time and vigilance, it will.

Here’s what I wrote in my last post:

“Iowa Democrats have a paucity of large donors. There just aren’t that many in the state. The chair plays a role in party fundraising, but the effort would be better served by delegating it to prominent Democrats on a volunteer basis. The idea some have proposed of requiring the chair to spend a percent of time fund raising belies the chair’s more important role in party building.”

The response was quick

@PaulDeaton_IA that’s been tried several times. Problem is the vols don’t follow through and it just puts the party farther behind.

— nsterzenbach (@nsterzenbach) December 2, 2016

The editor of Bleeding Heartland weighed in:

@PaulDeaton_IA Who’s going to do the fundraising if not the state party chair?

— Bleeding Heartland (@desmoinesdem) December 2, 2016

Here’s what’s inside this paragraph:

What the heck is he talking about? The state party chair is traditionally responsible for fundraising.

It is time to break with tradition. The chair will always be responsible for the major activities of the state party headquarters, including fundraising. The question is how should his or her responsibilities be prioritized? In my view the chair will continue to have a daily call list for those donors where the chair’s involvement makes a difference. Most of the fundraising work would and should be done by others.

The main purpose is not to create a fundraising shortfall, but to get firm commitments from prominent Democrats who are also experienced fundraisers to help manage the financial need for income. That should enable the chair to work more on party building.

Who the heck is Paul Deaton and what does he know about fundraising?

My main experience in political fundraising was working with Dick Schwab in his campaign for state representative. Schwab had raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for numerous enterprises including non-profits and businesses. When it came to raising over $100,000 for his political campaign he already had the network in place to tap people for donations. He lost the election but it wasn’t for lack of money.

In the years after the election I was approached three times about raising money for other candidates in the district based on my experience with Schwab. What I told them is relevant to this post. “The donor list is a matter of public record, but Schwab had a relationship with most of the people who contributed to his campaign. Neither I nor likely you can replicate that.”

Would Schwab be one of those “prominent Democratic volunteers” I mentioned? I don’t know but he serves as an example.

The Iowa Democratic Party needs dozens of this kind of volunteer — that have a Rolodex and relationships — who are willing to commit to fundraising. Maybe they do one event per cycle. Maybe they work longer to hunt the elephant that will feed the whole village. Maybe they work in a decentralized group. Based on my experience, it is unreasonable to rely on the single Rolodex and relationships of a party chair for fundraising. Cold calling lists provided by others is no substitute for existing relationships. There is a need to broaden the fundraising base by recruiting the prominent Democrats who are willing to play.

What the heck is all this money for?

The main point of my original post was “our quadrennial coalition building relies less on political parties and more on the places we go every day: church, schools, work, daycare, the grocery store and in our neighboring yards, gardens and apartments.” The commitment needed to run this kind of campaign is much broader into the electorate and boils down to what kind of people will we be as Democrats and can we get to know and recruit people in our circle of influence to join us? How much money is needed for that? Not much.

An eye opener for me came during the 2008 general election. One of my neighbors had a list of everyone in the neighborhood. It was her job to canvass them all, along with others persuade those she could, and get all of the Democratic supporters to vote early or on election day. Toward election day, we discussed every name on the list and made sure they either had voted or were still with us. It is election work as it should be, as I am proposing be supported by the Iowa Democratic Party.

The main needs from the party headquarters to support such an operation are a strong communications team and a stronger information technologies team. If done right, this decentralized approach can come at a very reasonable price.

Hillary Clinton outspent Donald Trump in campaign expenditures $450 million to $239 million. This broke the unwritten rule that the campaign with the most money wins the election — the origin of which is often attributed to Bill Clinton. Clinton was outspending Trump on TV ads 7-1 and 5-1 some weeks. After 2016 one should question the efficacy of political TV advertising, and every expense incurred during the course of the campaign. That is, if we want to elect Democrats to public office.

I hope this explains the idea.

The Iowa Democratic Party should be blown up and its structure re-engineered — from scratch.

There has been a lot of internet discussion about what’s next for the Iowa Democratic Party after three terrible election cycles. That is, terrible in terms of winning elections.

Here are my thoughts, most of which have been expressed previously.

Part of me says the Iowa Democrat Party has become irrelevant to most Iowans of voting age. According to the Iowa Secretary of State, 1,367,072 active voters (68 percent) were not registered as Democrats on Nov. 1.

Part of me says the Iowa Democratic Party is needed as a voice to counter Republican dominance in the legislature and governor’s office.

Part of me says the current Iowa Democratic Party should be completely blown up — new people, new office, new strategy, new tactics, new everything.

Part of me says I am getting too old to be investing much time in Democratic politics. I should let go and let the next generation take charge. I’m working on that.

The current generation doesn’t get to pick the next party leaders, nor do men and women in their twenties and thirties need a lecture from bloggers about what should or shouldn’t be next. They, and in turn we, will be fine.

I believe the strength of the Democratic party is it remains a big tent with people of all ages participating to some degree, if only by voting. We need to be less like a caravansary wandering in the desert and more like occupiers of the society Republicans have made on our historic turf. In that regard, age and experience in Democratic politics matters very little. What matters more is forgetting the anthropomorphism of “Democratic Party” and understanding our quadrennial coalition building relies less on political parties and more on the places we go every day: church, schools, work, daycare, the grocery store and in our neighboring yards, gardens and apartments.

What does that mean to the Iowa Democratic Party?

1. The time has come to compensate the party chair. Not a stipend. Not expense reimbursement. A salary with benefits.
2. Communications is the most important thing the party does and we need improvement. I subscribe to the news summary, read the press releases and listen to statements by the chair. While they have their high and low points, we are chasing the news rather than leading it. We need news people can use in places we go every day to talk about why we identify with the party. Party communications staff must spend some time figuring out what that means and making information easily available to party members.
3. Iowa Democrats have a paucity of large donors. There just aren’t that many in the state. The chair plays a role in party fundraising, but the effort would be better served by delegating it to prominent Democrats on a volunteer basis. The idea some have proposed of requiring the chair to spend a percent of time fund raising belies the chair’s more important role in party building.
4. The world won’t end if we ditch the caucuses. I see no reason to continue to collaborate with the Republicans in their party building. They are much better at using the caucuses toward this end, so why cede an advantage? I’d move the presidential preference vote to the June primary election and walk away from the notion that Iowa Democrats have any true influence. David Redlawsk disagrees with me, but I don’t spend any time in academia and almost all of my time in public with Trump voters drawn in as a result of Republican organizing during the caucus cycle. The Iowa caucus disadvantaged Democrats in 2016 and if it continues, it will get worse.
5. Data analysis is important to modern elections and some permanent staff is required to maintain it. Probably two or three people to make sure there is cross training if one gets recruited outside the party.  What matters less is using voter history as the primary driver in targeted canvassing. In fact there is a case to be made targeted canvassing should be relegated to the dustbin of history. It is neighbors and friends who voted Republican this cycle. We need to get to know them better throughout the state and recruit them to vote for our candidates. The party can assist in this effort, but the importance of decentralizing the canvass and get out the vote effort cannot be overstated.
6. The party needs a bookkeeper and my preference would be to find a talented, bonded firm to perform that work on a contract basis.

So that’s it — four or five permanent staff, and the rest contracted out or drawn from volunteers willing to work on Democratic politics year-around.

While I appreciate the internet discussion hosted by bloggers in the state, most voters I know don’t read many blogs. To be successful in 2018 and beyond, our focus as Democrats must be on making sure we know what we stand for and then working within our community to create a climate of listening to divergent views, followed by accommodation where it is possible and persuasion that Democrats have something to offer.

Additional Comment Dec. 6, 2016:

I sincerely appreciate the platform (Bleeding Heartland, where I cross posted) to present my ideas about restructuring the Iowa Democratic Party. I have no hope or illusions that anyone outside the blogosphere will pay much attention to what I say here but there has been some internet chatter about my post.

This statement was curious:

“This post does not say how to ‘blow up the party and start over.'”

Let me make it clear.

Withdraw from participation in the first in the nation caucuses and move presidential preference to the June primary.

Reduce IDP staffing to 4-5 paid employees focusing on leadership, communications and information technology.

Get rid of the targeted canvass and GOTV process.

Decentralize control of the party to counties, hopefully reducing the Polk County influence.

Empower local Democrats with information that can be used in our daily lives.

Renew focus on party recruitment by local Democrats.

Sixty-somethings like me should find another way to contribute and step back so young leaders can build the party they want to see.

If that’s not blowing up the current structure, I don’t know what is.

Thanks again to DesMoinesDem for providing this platform.

It saddens me to return to the Coolidge administration for guidance about the role of the press in contemporary times.

“The chief business of the American people is business,” President Calvin Coolidge said during a speech to the American Society of Newspaper Editors on Jan. 17, 1925.

“There does not seem to be cause for alarm in the dual relationship of the press to the public,” he said, speaking of the relationship between newspapers and their business interests. “Whereby it is on one side a purveyor of information and opinion and on the other side a purely business enterprise.”

Everyone who believes there is no cause for alarm about the role of the corporate media during the recent election stand on your head.

“I could not truly criticize the vast importance of the counting room,” Coolidge said. “But my ultimate faith I would place in the high idealism of the editorial room of the American newspaper.”

How many editorial rooms are there today? What the heck is an editorial room? Anyone?

Coolidge’s lack of criticism of the counting room, in this speech and throughout his administration, contributed to the stock market crash and the Great Depression.

“According to a Brookings Institution report in 1928, more than half of American families remained near or below the poverty level from 1923 to 1929,” Steven Oftinoski wrote in his biography of Calvin Coolidge. “Coolidge’s failure to put restraints on business and industry or to regulate the stock market certainly contributed to the 1929 market crash.”

“The administration took the narrow interest of business groups to be the national interests, and the result was catastrophe,” historian William Leuchtenberg wrote.

To say newspapers, and by extension the corporate media, are corrupt is to misunderstand the basic relationship between the press and business. They were just doing their job during the 2016 election, which in the post-Reagan society is to make money.

Ronald Reagan thought well of Coolidge.

“One of the rooms in the White House that benefited from Nancy’s good taste was the Oval Office, which got some new paint, a new floor, and new carpeting,” Ronald Reagan wrote in his autobiography An American Life. “I did my part by hanging up a picture of Calvin Coolidge in the Cabinet Room. I’d always thought of Coolidge as one of our most underrated presidents.”

What will President Donald Trump think?

Considering the birtherism he engendered and other criticisms laid on President Obama he seems likely re-decorate the Oval Office to purge evidence of his predecessor.

More important, he has pledged to lower tax rates and listen to business interests. Will trickle down tax policy work again as some claim it did during the Coolidge administration when he lowered taxes and paid down the country’s debt from World War I? I doubt it.

As my colleagues at the home, farm and auto supply store say, Trump hasn’t been president for one day yet. Nonetheless, the scent of Coolidge permeates his transition.

Will Trump be the next Coolidge with a little Reagan added?

I’m not holding my breath for the corporate media to report it, so I’d better just write it myself.

EDITOR NOTE: Last week I made the following comment on Bleeding Heartland’s web site on a post titled Iowa’s No Bellwether Anymore — And Neither Is Cedar County.

I’ve heard the framing “bellwether Iowa” before and believe it is buncombe (H.L. Mencken spelling). To me the discussion should be about swing voters.

Here are my initial reactions:

The size of Trump’s win in Cedar County doesn’t matter to the operative condition of swing voting which is the culture of the electorate. The mathematical framework here seems arbitrary. As I’ve argued with prominent Democrats in Cedar County, mathematical analysis isn’t how one understands the electorate at the county level.

History matters less than the candidate or slate of candidates up for election. It is predictable that based on population, ethnicity and factors you mentioned, with the high number of no preference voters (4,586) compared to Democrats (3,173) and Republicans (3,902) Trump would do well. Many in the Clinton bubble, including me, underestimated how much people dislike Hillary and Bill Clinton. The Republican party strategy was hammer Clinton repeatedly then do it again and it worked to persuade swing voters to vote Trump in big numbers.

Cedar County voters were willing to split the ticket in 2012. To answer the bellwether question one has to understand whether they will swing back given a different set of candidates. I believe they will.

The elephant in the room is the Kaufmann family. Since Jeff ran successfully for Cedar County supervisor, and Bobby ran for state house, and their family has deep, multi-generational roots in the county, their influence is everywhere. The fact that Jeff Kaufmann was Republican Party chair this cycle mattered a lot to Trump’s high margin. Beginning with the caucuses he was able to activate voters for events in a way I believe gave Republicans a clear advantage in preparing for the general.

I don’t claim to be an expert on Cedar County, although I virtually lived there most of July – October of 2012. As long as the Kaufmanns sustain their hegemony it won’t be anything like a bellwether.

~ Written for Bleeding Heartland

Open Letter to State Representative Bobby Kaufmann

Congratulations on your mentions on FOX News and in the Washington Post last week.

Your proposed legislation to claw back money from state funded schools that supported students after the general election got their attention and raised your personal national profile. Well done on self-promotion!

Your political supporters may be cheering you on, but constituents are not.

Perhaps you should have considered the November protests in Iowa City and elsewhere more thoroughly before clutching the limelight of media attention.

Your statement on FOX News that “in life there are winners and losers” may apply to elections and sporting games but our God-given lives are about much more than winning and losing. You denigrated the lives of hard-working parents by this statement.

To CBC Radio you said, “I believe the national conversation needs to take place with both sides coming to the table.”

Let me refresh your memory.

Republicans attempted to de-legitimize President Obama from his inauguration and obstructed everything they could during his administration. They pledged to do the same should the Democrat have won Nov. 8.

In 1971, I joined with others to stop traffic on Interstate 80 near Iowa City, not unlike the recent protests you found annoying. Those of us who had been tear-gassed in our dormitory rooms without provocation had a bone to pick as we intentionally tried to stop business as usual and pay attention to ending the Vietnam War. Our bonfire on I-80 didn’t last long before the Iowa Highway Patrol broke it up, pursued and arrested many among us.

When people take to the streets in protest there is little concern about one’s arrest record regardless of the penalties.

“Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty,” Thomas Jefferson said. We’ll be vigilant during the 87th Iowa General Assembly.

The president-elect has withdrawn into Trumpworld.

“For nearly the entire week since he became president-elect, Donald Trump has been holed up in his gilded New York skyscraper,” wrote Julie Pace and Jill Colvin of Associated Press. “A steady stream of visitors has come to him, flooding through metal detectors and getting whisked up to Trump’s offices and penthouse residence.”

Reading the tea leaves after the Nov. 8 election is pointless until the new administration’s cabinet and staff is named — until the president-elect emerges.

As the procession of supplicants makes its way to the tower my advice is to hunker down and let chips fall where they will. The president-elect gets to name his own team and outsiders to may as well go piss up a rope as try to influence his decisions.

I’m keeping my powder dry and so should others who intend to resist the imminent rollback of long-established policies. This is a basic military tactic I learned as an infantry officer.

To be effective, we must be vigilant for now, and ready to resist the growing hegemony of Trumpworld.

Having inoculated myself early on to the possibility of Donald Trump winning Iowa’s six electoral votes, my reaction to his Nov. 8 victory in a close national election was more recoil than shock.

“Expect Iowa to award its six electoral votes to Donald Trump this cycle, contrary to the claims of prominent Iowa Democrats,” I wrote on Sept. 16.

I believed Hillary Clinton would win nationally based on conventional sources — polls, media analysis, progressive friends and family. Trump didn’t just win Iowa. He beat Clinton statewide by almost 10 points, attracting voters repulsed by his personal character but not wanting another Clinton in the White House. Trump won the voters that make Iowa a swing state.

My surprise in the result came from a failure to listen to my own experience.

“Low wage workers are everywhere in Iowa in significant numbers,” I wrote Sept. 15. “Based on my conversations with them, if they vote at all, they are just as likely to vote for Donald Trump as Hillary Clinton, whose name the corporate media associates with all things bad.”

As we now know, a majority of the people I described weren’t at all likely to vote for Hillary Clinton. I didn’t want to believe Trump could win and that distorted my perception.

The messaging from Republicans was direct, simple and effective.

“The American people have had enough of failed status quo policies which have left them less hopeful for our country’s future,” said Jeff Kaufmann, Republican Party of Iowa chair in an Aug. 10 press release. “They have had enough of serially dishonest, corrupt, and self-interested career politicians like the Clintons.”

Their candidate hammered this message home over and over in an effective social media campaign which, when combined with a national GOTV effort that worked with local parties, enabled Republicans to distract many Democrats while they networked with people early on.

What we thought we knew about politics proved to be outdated as conventional political wisdom was incinerated this cycle. If Democrats held a ground game advantage in 2006 and 2008, Iowa Republicans reached parity this cycle. Ground game is no longer a political advantage, it is a necessary tool. Ground game must be well executed for Democrats to maintain parity with Republicans.

Having competed with Jeff Kaufmann’s political organization on his home turf of Wilton and Cedar County in 2012, I believe the success of Republicans statewide is due mainly to his 2014 appointment as their party chair and broader application of tactics he has long used on the ground. Like with any competition, each game, each election is a result of training and performance. The level of expected ground game performance has been raised this cycle.

Experience tells me election day didn’t bring the end of politics as we know it. The body politic is ever changing, ever re-inventing itself, sometimes by design, sometimes by unintended consequences. Those of us who believe the framework of society is enduring also see an opportunity in the election results for positive change. After voting for Richard Nixon in 1960, Iowa elected Democrat Harold Hughes as governor.

After recoiling from the repugnant national election results my response is simple: confront bigotry, work to build positive community relations where I live, and resist the rollback of everything I’ve worked for.

These things can only be accomplished by joining together with others in common purpose. Or as Hillary Clinton said, we are stronger together.